


danger signs will never let the feelings die

by dumblesnore



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 13:56:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13705860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumblesnore/pseuds/dumblesnore





	danger signs will never let the feelings die

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been thinking about it. Sure, he’d been relatively cold and impersonal at the countless varnished wood tables he’d had to sit behind, shoulder to shoulder with lawyers and typists and whoever the fuck else was being paid considerable sums of money to be there—but it wasn’t like rehashing the legal ramifications of the past year of his life hadn’t brought up a few sore memories. He’d started out sidestepping them, prodding gently at wounds that had yet to heal: a bittersweet band of bruises that shone with the deep fervency of a corked bottle of red wine, sourly aged and steeped in their own festering malice. He’d been advised not to read any of the media coverage by his lawyer—a stern woman with neatly pressed suits and flaxen hair she kept swept back, narrowed eyes calculating his movements whenever they spoke. She wasn’t aware that he’d read most of the articles by then anyway, unable to stop himself from googling his name like a modern day Narcissus while standing opposite his laptop in a bathrobe that hung loose around his shoulders, the soles of his feet bare against the icy tiles of his kitchen floor. One particularly memorable journalist at an online publication had alluded to him as “ _the jaded ex of a multi-million dollar company,”_ and the term “ _ex,”_ had stirred something unpleasant in the pit of his stomach, chagrin creeping up past the hollow of his throat. It hadn’t always been the way it was now. It hadn’t always been vicious sniping at each other over a detached soundtrack of typing keys, everything laid out bare, in ink and on the record, as if his chest had been cracked open for others to pore through. It had been quiet, private, personally volatile. The odd push and pull of their friendship had always looked strange and off-balance to those on the outside—hindsight had just enlightened Eduardo to the fact that it had been strange and off-balance on the inside too. The lawyers certainly seemed to think so.

He remembers one Friday night spent with Mark hunched over at his desk: his face—always about five inches from the screen when he was concentrating—washed out a sickly shade of white by the eye-watering electronic light from his laptop, whereas one ear and a cheekbone were painted bright and peachy with the dusky setting sunlight that filtered through the dorm room window. Eduardo on his back atop the tousled sheets of Mark’s bed, sullenly bringing a bottle of beer to his lips as he kicked aimlessly at the headboard and thumbed through an economics textbook he wasn’t really reading. Mark held a sigh of frustration behind his teeth, fingers flexing at the keyboard.  _“Wardo.”_

_“Mmh.”_

_“How do you feel about takeout?”_

_“I feel like it’s calling out to me right now.”_

The angry glow of Mark’s alarm clock, digital numbers flickering neon green across the greasy cardboard containers of noodles from the Vietnamese place he knew Eduardo didn’t really like, but continued to order from anyway. Their knees brushing on the scratchy carpeted floor, Eduardo feeling the space between his shoulder blades bruise where he was leaning against the knobbly drawers of Mark’s desk. He exhaled deeply, stretching a leg out perilously close to Mark’s thigh and nudging it roughly with the heel of his foot.  _“You ever think about getting out more? Going to parties?”_ Mark let out a vicious bark of laughter, snapping apart cheap wooden chopsticks with the air of someone who wanted to avoid this line of conversation.  _“No, I’m being serious,”_ Eduardo knew his voice was slipping into the soft-spoken, girlish tone it always seemed to adopt when he was trying to reason with Mark, his words tumbling out gentler than he intended them to be. He cleared his throat.  _“It’s not like you’d be alone.”_

Mark rolled his eyes.  _“It’s not about being alone,”_ he paused to cock his head, considering.  _“Actually, maybe it is. It’s about being in a room full of college students trashed on subpar beer and riding their own ego all night without having anything interesting to say, while_ wishing _I was alone.”_

Eduardo let out a burdened exhale, pinching the bridge of his nose momentarily before realising it made him look matronly and highly strung, and dropping his hand with swift embarrassment.  _“I meant.. look, I was saying you’d be with me.”_

There was a beat of silence. A streak of syrupy dipping sauce shone across Mark’s bottom lip as he tilted his head back and stared at Eduardo grinding prawn cracker crumbs into dust with the base of his (now empty) beer bottle. Mark had always done that: stared at him in a way that bordered on intrusive, glassy eyes shifting from vague dislike to an awed sort of appreciation. It was different when they were alone though, just talking. Flushed cheeks and a knitted brow making his face look younger, boyish almost, despite the indignant tilt of his chin.

Eduardo didn’t break eye contact, knocking his shoulder into one of the drawer handles on Mark’s desk with a soft thump when he attempted a shrug.  _“Y’know. ‘Cause I’m your friend.”_

Then they’d snap back into bickering about inconsequential shit: teasing Mark mercilessly about final clubs and the weird pseudo-relationship he had with Erica, flinging cold strands of sticky egg noodle at each other, limbs pliant with the bitter brand of German beer Mark kept their fridge stocked with. Eduardo had spent a lot of time mulling over the way he'd thrown those words back at Mark in a room full of people. Mark, who'd worn a twenty dollar zip-up hoodie over a shirt and tie to their inquisition, and had stared at Eduardo choke through that sentence twice ( _twice_ ) with the same wide and glassy eyes he'd always stared at him with: this time his gaze was cut with a vague sheen of hurt, as if Eduardo had been so brazen as to slap him across the face in the middle of their formal acknowledgement of each other across the plywood table that separated them. So, it wasn't like he hadn't been fucking thinking about it.


End file.
